The new Formula One Lotus T127 was unveiled at a launch in London in February 2010. Photograph: Luke Macgregor/Reuters

It was Thursday morning but the Lotus mechanics were already busier than barmen in an all-inclusive hotel.

To find them in their famous green and yellow colours at Silverstone yesterday involved a stiff walk through the paddock pecking order, past the preening motor homes of McLaren, Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes – past the best of the thrusters, Renault, Force India and Williams, past even Torro Rosso and BMW-Sauber who make up the lower mid-table of Formula One's league table.

They are down there with the other two new teams this year, Virgin and HRT. To call them new, of course, is just a little misleading – although Lotus Racing is a new title. On Sunday the Lotus name will compete here in a "home" grand prix for the first time since 1994, the year they slipped into administration.

Two weeks ago in Valencia Lotus competed in their 500th grand prix. Jim Clark and Ayrton Senna – perhaps the finest two drivers the sport has seen – have worn the distinctive colours. So did Graham Hill, Emerson Fittipaldi, Ronnie Peterson, Mario Andretti and Jochen Rindt.

They have won 79 races and there have been 107 pole positions. This is the team, after all, which best represented the heyday of British motor sport in the 1960s. It is 50 years ago since Stirling Moss won a race for them for the first time. This was the team forged by the brilliant Colin Chapman, who built his first car in a rickety workshop behind his father's north London pub some six decades ago and went on to dominate the sport. Chapman died of a heart attack in 1982 when he was only 54. It was Senna's departure to McLaren in 1988, however, which probably did for the old team.

But yesterday, after 16 years away, the new team returned to Silverstone, under the team principal of the modern operation, Tony Fernandes.

"When you think that the team was put together and the car was built and raced all within five months that is pretty staggering," he said. "Lotus has not been in Formula One for 16 years, so it will be a step up this year wherever we finish in the championship."

Fernandes, the man behind Air Asia, knows something about putting together a successful business. His father used to take him to watch Formula 3 in Malaysia and his most impressive turn of speed so far this season was getting team Lotus off the ground.

They were toiling like sailors in a storm yesterday and in the middle of them was Heikki Kovalainen. If the drivers of the three new teams might be referred to as the Small Six, the Finn has been the fastest and most reliable. Lotus, like Virgin and HRT, could be duffers in the Eurovision because after eight races they have, between them, accumulated nul points. But Kovalainen has been the best driver among the new teams. His potential is unfulfilled for one who showed thrilling speed in his GP2 days but only too fitfully in his two years at McLaren, such as the time he blitzed Lewis Hamilton in qualifying on this very track two years ago. Now he is playing a role for which he has not rehearsed. He is making the most of a car that cannot compete with the front of the grid.

"It is very different from my time at McLaren," says Kovalainen, whose biggest impact – literally – this season came in Valencia when Mark Webber's Red Bull ran into the back of him and flew high into the air like a performing seal.

"But we are making progress – more progress than the teams at the front of the grid, actually, because we started slow and have had more ground to make up. That will get more difficult as we go on. We are already working on next year's car. And we are getting to the stage when we can start to look at Sauber and the teams in front of us.

"I'm happy with the engine. But we do need to improve our aeros. We have an upgrade for Silverstone which should improve our performance but we will have to continue to work on the aeros."

That is the challenge for the team's lead engineer, the experienced Mike Gascoyne, one of the highest paid men in the business, who has also worked with McLaren, Renault and Sauber, among others.

They resemble some Chekhov character, one with a beautiful past but a tricky present and an uncertain future. Their team is based in Norfolk, close to the old home, an acknowledgment of a rich tradition, but it is completely new and now Malaysian-owned. Any traditionalist who questions Fernandes' commitment to Lotus, however, should think again. "My dad supported Lotus," he said. "I grew up supporting Lotus. Jim Clark was my favourite driver. He was unique. Now I want to create new heroes."

The legend of Lotus is secure – and, to judge by Fernandes, the legacy is no less assured.